For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child

laid plans based on a
‘feeling’.
    For three months Mother remained alone and
lonely in Afghanistan while we missed her terribly in India. Before
long Papa decided that we would move from New Delhi to Bangalore to
be with Nadia, saying that it was silly for the three of us to be
separated.
    Meanwhile the entire family grew frantic with
worry about Qaseem, who had never appeared over the border in
Pakistan. He was unheard of from the time he had left Afghanistan
with the smuggler. Papa was beginning to realize that whatever
instinct it was that Mother had followed, it had been correct.
    Some months later Qaseem’s worried family
received a telephone call from a prison complex in the east of
Afghanistan. The smuggler and his clients had been arrested. All
had received a beating as well as an eight-year prison sentence. We
worried that poor Qaseem would not survive his lengthy sentence
because prisons in Afghanistan under the Communists were very
harsh. Certainly, my frail Mother would never have survived an
eight-year prison term.
    Papa was never again to ridicule Mother’s
instincts and premonitions: in fact, he grew to quite respect
them.
    In Bangalore we found a quaint little hotel
that catered for British expatriates. The hotel had a smattering of
little guesthouses on the property, and we made one of those
bungalows our home. Since Papa was not working and I was not
enrolled in school, and Nadia was busy with her medical studies,
Papa and I were lonely and bored. Most troubling, Afghanistan was
always in the news. Since we had arrived in India, Afghan Muslim
rebels had revolted. The Soviet Union had responded by sending in
40,000 soldiers to defeat the warriors.
    I knew that for however long it took, Afghan
warriors would not give up the fight. Eventually, the mighty
Russians would be defeated. It might take one year or it might take
fifty years, but Afghans would overthrow the Russian invaders.
Afghan people had never submitted to invaders. Obviously the
leaders of the Soviet Union had failed to read our history.
    *
    The tide was already turning. Due to the
ongoing cold war and the friction between the Soviet Union and
America and Europe, the rest of the world focused on the fate of my
country. President Jimmy Carter repeatedly warned the Russians of
their folly. A special session of the UN General Assembly passed
resolution 104-18 calling for the immediate withdrawal of foreign
troops from Afghanistan. Foreign journalists were reporting
massacres and assassinations.
    Afghanistan was exploding into war. Watching
the news was a special agony, for the screen would be filled with
hordes of refugees, burqa-clad women herding four or five little
children each, streaming over the border and into Pakistan to be
dumped in tent cities. Were relatives of ours who had once lived
the good life shivering in those tents? Not in a hundred lifetimes
could I absorb what was happening to my country and to my
countrymen and women.
    Our chief worry was Mother. Although she had
members of her close-knit family near by, we were frantic for her
safety. During the month of February 1980 there was a general
strike and violent demonstrations in Kabul and other major Afghan
cities. The communist militia inflicted heavy casualties on the
demonstrators. In April of that same year, Kabul University
students staged a huge demonstration, resulting in the deaths of
fifty of them. When hearing that story Papa breathed a sigh of
relief, saying, ‘Praise Allah that we are out of Kabul. You would
have been a leader of those demonstrators, daughter, wouldn’t you?
Then what would have happened to us?’
    In June, several tribal groups known as the
Mujahedin (a Persian word meaning warriors) united inside
Afghanistan. Fighters from neighbouring Muslim countries began to
join the fray. People from around the world came to help the
resistance against the Soviet army.
    That’s when we received some rare good news.
Uncle Hakim, his wife Rabeha and daughters Zarmina and Zeby had
received permission to leave Afghanistan. They were travelling to
India and from there to France. Later they might join Farid in
Bahrain. Yet our happiness for them was tempered by the fact that
with their departure, Mother’s little family circle in Kabul was
shrinking, making us feel even more anxious for her safety.
    Papa had kept in touch with his friend from
the ministry and every week or so I would hear him utter a great
big sigh before settling at his desk to pen an